1. Field of the Invention
This invention is related to encoding and decoding Chinese characters using a Chinese word processor program. The program is loaded into a computer that has a standard keyboard, but the letters on the keys are replaced with strokes and roots (simple characters). The computer processes each root key entry based upon three basic strokes: horizontal (-), vertical (.linevert split.) and slant (/).
2. Description of Related Art
Both the English written language and the Chinese written language characters have an alphabet of 26 writing strokes (listed later on) that can be used to write any character. Unlike the English written language, the writing space allocated for each character of the Chinese written language is the same, regardless of the number of strokes used (1 stroke or over 30 strokes).
A character, by definition, is a symbol or a picture. The original Chinese characters were actual physical pictures. They were used to record events and to express thoughts. The character SUN was a picture of the sun and the character MOON was a half-picture of the moon .
After centuries of transformation and simplification, Chinese characters lost their original identities and pictures. The character SUN became and the character MOON became as used today.
Because of the limited supply of pictures and the complexity of some pictures, existing pictures were combined with others to meet the demand for expressing various thoughts and events. The new combined pictures (consisting of a simple character or a root) generally reflected the characteristics of the old ones.
For instance, the character (CLEAR ) is derived by combining the characters (SUN ) and (MOON ). The sun gives light during the day and the moon gives light at night. Things on earth are always clear because there is light from the sky during the day and night.
Another example is the character (GOOD ). It is made of the characters (GIRL and BOY ). The marriage between a boy and a girl creates joy, and produces babies that continue the human race, so this is good. A (NATION ) is a piece of land surrounded by four walls (, which is a square, not a mouth (). Within the piece of land surrounded by four walls are living things with a mouth (), tools (ax and knight ), and a forest () that is a place where many tree/wood () grow. It can be seen that the Chinese characters were pictures with thoughts drawn together.
Many of the original pictures (simple character/roots) became the building blocks for the Chinese written language. There are over 214 roots in the root table in the Chinese dictionary for finding characters. The majority of these roots are related to the objects that were known by man during the early age of history, such as:
(sun ), (moon ), (gold ), (tree ), PA1 (fire ), (water ), (land ), PA1 (grass ), (fish ), (bird ), (insects ), PA1 (horse ), (man ), (boy ), and (girl ). PA1 The character (post ) has (wood ) as its left-hand root. PA1 This indicates that a post is made from wood. PA1 Another example is (river ) whose left-hand root is "three drops of water ()", so that river is related to water. PA1 Characters (post ), (stick ), (liver ) and (sweat ). PA1 Characters (river ), (question ), (plant name ) and (unusual ). PA1 and others. PA1 (Mouth ) is used in the characters (Return ) and (Key ).
Tree, glass, water, and fire are the most popular roots. Chinese characters are formed with one or more writing strokes. There are 26 writing strokes that can be used to write any character. These 26 strokes are listed below and are considered to be the alphabet for the Chinese written language:
The formation of Chinese characters is similar to the formation of English words. In English, words are constructed by placing the letters from its 26-letter alphabet in different sequences. In Chinese, characters are constructed by placing root characters (there are over 214 roots formed by the above strokes) within a confined space. The relative position of these roots to each other convey physical relations and meanings. In general, the root on the left-side of the character indicates what this character is related to. Take the character "post" as an example:
Some of the roots, related to objects, are placed on either the top or on the bottom of the characters. There is a "Rule of Thumb" which can be applied to reading some characters: "If a character has a right-hand root, then read the root. If a character has no right-hand root, then read the top or bottom half of the character." Examples are shown below: